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Saturday, April 23, 2016

Musee d’Unterlinden and the Wine Road of Alsace

The Unterlinden Museum (officially Musée d'Unterlinden, also
cited in English as Musée Unterlinden) is located in Colmar, France, in the
Alsace region. The museum, housed in a 13th-century Dominican religious
sisters' convent, is home to the Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald and
features a large collection of local and international artworks and
manufactured artifacts from prehistorical to contemporary times. The museum
bears the quality label Musée de France and is one of the most visited in France
outside of the Île-de-France.

The museum was established in 1849, the buildings (abandoned
following the French Revolution) having been saved by the Societé Schongauer
(founded in 1847 by Louis Hugot ) and bequeathed to it by the municipality. The
collection at first centered around a Roman mosaic found in Bergheim,
Haut-Rhin, still displayed today at the place to which it was originally moved,
and plaster copies of antique sculptures on loan from the Louvre. In 1852, the
focus of the collection shifted dramatically, when the Isenheim Altarpiece as
well as most of the other large painted and/or sculpted altarpieces from former
Colmar or Upper Rhenish churches, abbeys and monasteries, were installed in the
building. The museum opened its doors to the general public in the following
year, 1853. As the museum's official website states : "Today the museum
covers a surface area of about 5,620 m², including exhibition spaces (4,000
m²), conservation, storage and other work areas (1,370 m²), and offices (250
m²)".

In the 1950s and again in the 1980s, the need appeared for
the museum, which had seen a steady growth of the number of its displayed
artifacts in every domain, to gain more space by using available surface more
appropriately, and was each time addressed as far as the classified character
of the building in itself could allow. Today, the Unterlinden Museum currently
spreads out over three levels and makes use of every space available in the
large complex of buildings. The city of Colmar is currently working to
transform the adjacent, Art Nouveau former baths building, into an annex of the
museum, in which, by 2014, the modern masters can be displayed permanently.
According to the museum's website, "The total area open to the public,
which now amounts to 4,000 m², will be enlarged to 6,300 m²"